Cannes 2019: Directors’ Fortnight lineup revealed

The Directors’ Fortnight, which runs parallel to the Cannes Film Festival, has revealed an intriguing lineup. This is the first year at the helm for the section’s new artistic director Paolo Moretti and in keeping with the strand’s history his first lineup is largely made up of emerging directors.Coming to the lineup: Bertrand Bonello, Rebecca Zlotowski and Robert Eggers’ The Lighthouse, starring Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe, is among the films set for the Directors’ Fortnight sidebar at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Described by Paolo Moretti as a “hypnotic two-hander” powered by Pattinson and Dafoe, The Lighthouse is fantasy horror film set in a mysterious island in New England at the end of the 19th century. Eggers previously directed The Witch.The list also includes Takashi Miike’s latest feature First Love and Netflix film Wounds, whose inclusion is sure to raise eyebrows - as Cannes is the only major film festival not to allow Netflix’s films in its competition.As with Cannes’s official selection, Directors’ Fortnight will showcase a wide range of genre movies. Besides The Lighthouse, the other anticipated genre films set for Directors’ Fortnight include Bertrand Bonello’s voodoo drama Zombi Child and Tunisian helmer Ala Eddine Slim’s Tlamess.Oscar winner Luca Guadagnino’s 35-minute short, The Staggering Girl, whose cast is led by Julianne Moore, will make its world premiere in the Fortnight lineup in a special screening. While Rebecca Zlotowski’s coming-of-age story An Easy Girl will have its world premiere, there will be a special screening of Robert Rodriguez’s Red 11 as well.The lineup also includes Nicolas Pariser’s French political drama Alice et le maire; Lech Kowalski’s Blow It to Beats; Swedish director Levan Akin’s And Then We Danced; Kirill Mikhanovsky’s comedy-drama Give Me Liberty; Filipino director Lav Diaz’s The Halt; Finnish helmer J-P Valkeapaa’s Dogs Don’t Wear Pants; Melina Leon’s Peruvian Song Without a Name and Belgian director Bas Devos’s Ghost Tropic among many others.Directors’ Fortnight will open with Quentin Dupieux’s Deerskin, an offbeat French comedy, while it will wrap with Benoit Forgeard’s Yves, a comedy centering on a young man whose modest life is turned upside down by a “smart” refrigerator, which becomes his ghost writer.The non-competitive Directors’ Fortnight section sits outside the parameters of the Cannes Film Festival and is organized by the French Directors’ Guild. It prides itself on its “freedom of thinking” but is inevitably closely associated with the festival. In recent years it has shown some of the most buzzed about U.S. movies to emerge from the whole festival, including The Florida Project and The Rider.Directors’ Fortnight will commence on May 15 and will continue till May 25, 2019. – With information from The Hollywood Reporter and Variety.

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